Investigating and comparing short period impact of dust on physiological characteristics of three species of Pinus eldarica, Cupressus sempervirens, and Ligustrum ovalifolium

• Published in: Arabian journal of geosciences 2016-04, Vol.9 (4), p.1-12, Article 244
• Main Authors: Taheri Analojeh, Azam, Azimzadeh, Hamid-Reza, Mosleh Arani, Asghar, Sodaiezadeh, Hamid
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: DUST; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; Original Paper
• ISSN: 1866-7511; 1866-7538
• DOI: 10.1007/s12517-015-2241-5

The purpose of this study is to know about the short period response of three green area plants to deposit of dust on the plants and impact on their physiological characteristics. In recent decade, the number of dusty days increased in some parts of Iran because of drought and erosive wind blowing on erodible lands. In this study, three species of Pinus eldarica , Cupressus sempervirens , and Ligustrum ovalifolium were selected. The amount of cumulative falling dust of 1, 2, and 4 g/cm 2 was deposited on samples using a dust simulator in three stages with time interval of 1 week. At the end of each stage, physiological characteristics of the three treatment seedlings and three control seedlings were measured from each species. To further investigate the effect of dust, the position of dust on the leaves of the three plant species was prepared by Scanner Electronic Microscopic (SEM). Measurement results show that dust increase has no significant effect on the physiological parameters of proline, chlorophyll and carotenoids, and soluble sugar of P. eldarica and C. sempervirens species. But two mechanisms have been used by L. ovalifolium plants to compensate for the lack of light absorption. This has increased chlorophyll content and its growth. Increasing dust in L. ovalifolium has significant effect on chlorophyll and morphological structures, such as stem length and number of leaves. The results also showed that the amount of soluble sugars did not change by increasing dust. Since the impact of growth factors in this study showed a significant increase with increase of dust, one can conclude that the soluble sugars from photosynthesis have been used for the structure of the three studied plants. According to the study, short period dusting have no effect on P. eldarica and C. sempervirens species but have significant effect on L. ovalifolium.